


Like a Wolf to the Slaughter

by willowbilly



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: And It's Mildly Dubious Consent at That, Asphyxiation, Breathplay, Codependency, Consensual But Not Safe Or Sane, Hannibal is Hannibal, Light Angst, M/M, Non-Sexual Kink, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Sadism, Shotgunning, Smoking, Smoking is bad, True Nakama Yo, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings, Under-negotiated Kink, Unhealthy But Loving Relationships, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, of normal cigarette smoke but still, oh yeah and also
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-11 21:41:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9033995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/willowbilly/pseuds/willowbilly
Summary: Hannibal and Will get a motel room and have a good time. And by "good time" I mean Hannibal goads Will into strangling him so as to alleviate Will's newfound hankering for violence.





	

From his shopping trip Will brings brie, discount red wine in a box, and a loaf of what claimed to be artisan rosemary herb bread back to their dreary little motel room just as dusk is beginning to fall, hot and thick, the humid air pressing in close even as the darkness does.

Hannibal lounges in the armchair next to the single, streaky window to the right of the door, having pulled back the dingy gingham curtains so that he can watch the storm front roll in above the near-vacant parking lot and the strip mall across the crack-riddled street, everything slightly too bright in contrast to the dark clouds looming perhaps a mile or so away, unreal, but not ethereal; everything has the feel of a certain strain of ostensibly charming faux-homey commercialization which was first established in the fifties, refurbished in the seventies, outdated by the turn of the century, and which was by now barely clinging to life with its fingernails of faded plastic, a tiny podunk pit of mom and pop waffle houses, decrepit linoleum, and inferior cleaning products around which the main highways had long since been rerouted, the paint on the handmade _Welcome to_ road signs peeling to show the gray of splintering wood beneath.

The motel lock rattles and clicks, the doorknob turns, the hinges stick and then squeal, the plastic shopping bags rustling and bumping between the wall and Will's leg as he slides in. Hannibal leaves him to wrestle with the key, the door, and the groceries on his own, instead electing to fiddle with the abandoned pack of cigarettes he'd retrieved from behind the dresser, the thin cardboard construction polished to a fuzzy baldness at the corners and the two or so lonely cigarettes tapping lightly within as he turns it around in his hands.

He'd briefly taken up smoking when earning his medical degree in France under the mentorship of Dr. Dumas, having observed that many others of the field as well as Dumas himself indulged in the vice. The stress of the job, perhaps, was enough to negate the upkeep of one's own commonsense health practices even for those who were meant to preserve the health of others. Ridiculous, but a sign of normality. Regularity. The person suit he'd worn back then had still been in need of extensive tailoring, and he'd tried many different, subtle things to better his simulation of common humanity. Some more successful than others.

He had quit within the span of two weeks. The smell of tobacco smoke permeated the wardrobe and lingered for far too long on the breath, stained the teeth and fingers, and was even enough to interfere with the clarity of the palate, which was absolutely intolerable for a gourmand of Hannibal's caliber. A nasty and literally cancerous habit. Better to do without, and to dispatch those with the gall to smoke indoors.

Outside, the billowing depths of the slow-shifting clouds flicker with a hidden bolt of lightning, deep gray mottled with deeper black momentarily illuminated by a silken flash of roiling white, its monochrome hues inverted into a negative image and then back again. Three seconds pass before the velvety grumble of thunder splits through the ragged rhythm of Will's footsteps scuffing against the cheap carpet. Hephaestus at his forge, three miles off, not one.

Hannibal places the pack on the windowsill and folds his hands over his abdomen without looking away.

The door slams. Will deposits his offerings one by one, all in a row, on the tall round table in front of Hannibal's chair, each item ripped out of its shopping bag and pointedly, deliberately dropped from a height of several centimeters so that each makes a soft _thunk_ sound heavy enough to rattle the table's sad old legs where they bracket Hannibal's own outstretched ones. One. Two. Three. Bread. Boxed wine. Brie.

“Fancy enough for you?” Will asks. The lights are off, as Hannibal had found the continuous, off-key buzzing they emitted to be wholly unpleasant to his ears, and Will has turned his head towards the bed, into the shadows, so that Hannibal will supposedly have a harder time discerning his expression, but he already knows what his dear Will's downcast face must look like: flat of affect, eyebrows slightly raised but eyes dull, a patient grudge sitting gentle in the part of his lips, the Dragon's scar a nicely healing ridge of red, slashed horizontally just a bit above the line of his beard, the knitted tissue still a little stiff where it runs through the tranquil muscles of his cheek.

They have torn each other apart, stitched each other back together again, they are at once each other's salvation and their doom, weakness and strength, death and life. Of course Hannibal would know. They both know. Always.

“You need not be so passive with your aggression, Will,” Hannibal offers by way of chiding response, ignoring the proffered provisions. They are, in fact, not fancy enough, but he feels he is above criticizing Will's shopping choices by now. Aloud, at least.

He has grown as a person. And is rightly smug of that fact.

“Needn't I?” Will says, quips, almost, and turns back into the waning light of the window so that Hannibal can observe the quirk of his mouth.

Hannibal unlaces his fingers and steeples them, the heels of his hands still on his stomach, elbows on the armrests. Despite the upholstery's atrocious décor of what was once likely mottled beige, khaki, and salmon pink before it had washed out nearly to dishwater-white, the armchair is unexpectedly comfortable, encouraging a reclining, rather casual demeanor which Hannibal has elected to succumb to. It rather lacks the mien of readied poise and power he prefers, but one cannot always have everything one wants.

He will make do with as regal a form of slouching as he can manage, with aesthetically unbecoming comfort and nondescript clothes. For now. For, after all, he now has Will, and myriad trials may be weathered so long as his greatest prize permits himself to stay, despite his conscience, despite the nightmares which even now rattle within his beloved skull most nights and linger in his eyes when he opens them to meet Hannibal's watchful gaze come morning, his exhausted, pallid face rapturous in repose with the silence of sleeping screams and his pupils expanding, not contracting, as they are touched by the light, by Hannibal's smile, Stygian, inky pools of perfect symmetry far more celestial than anything hath heaven.

The lengths they will go to, not to be alone.

“I thought you had reached an equilibrium within yourself with regards to your more violent impulses.”

“Ever the therapist,” Will says, stingingly thin as a paper cut, the quirk of his lips expanding into a weary, mirthless smile.

Hannibal shrugs.

Will looks back into the shadows, his hair lit like a halo of brambles about his crown. He's been growing his curls out as they were during his incarceration in the BSHCM, a flyaway Dionysus tumble exacerbated by the humidity, shining with greasy silver highlights in the dimness. He needs to shower more often. A certain level of natural masculine aroma is pleasing, but the tangy note left by night sweats mixed with the musty musk of accumulated travel grime and BO poorly coated with a liberal application of chemical-laden dollar-store deodorant is not. Hannibal wonders if there is a tactful way of broaching the subject of personal hygiene with one's _nakama._ Preferably in a manner which will not be taken as an offense on the part of the grungy party.

“Self-acceptance,” Will says, softly but assuredly. “That's what I've reached. Not... equilibrium.”

“Ah,” Hannibal says. He tilts his head to the side, uncrosses and recrosses his ankles as he considers. Will _has_ been unsettled of late, jumpy, a hunger in the flexing of his hands and in the clench of his teeth. “Having finally unfettered the beasts of your basic instincts in full, you are finding it difficult to leash them once more.”

“They're shackled there in the back of my mind. Won't stop rattling their chains. Howling.”

“They have a taste for blood.”

“They've 'tasted blood' before. The difference being that I can... let myself... _revel_ in it, now.”

Hannibal smiles, a warm glow pressing outward from his heart. “This honesty you have been able to achieve with yourself is something to take pride in.”

Will pauses for a moment, snorts faintly, a sharp, delicate exhalation of air, and turns slowly on his heels, his arms coming up across his chest as though he is about to begin pacing, though he falls still again. One eye remains in shadow, the other a pale, glassy gray-blue before he dips his head towards his shoes and his lashes lower over the ghostly glimmer of color. “Maybe so. But it's not like we can afford to track down another serial killer and go to town with a couple knives and an ax just to sate a craving. Our profile isn't low enough as it is.”

“We could always simply prey upon the rude,” Hannibal suggests, a tad too hopefully.

There is the glint of blue again, flashing upwards as he shoots Hannibal a quelling glare, and then further upwards in a roll of the eyes. “Bad manners may be enough to warrant a death sentence in your view, but not mine. I won't tolerate indiscriminate killings simply to suit your whimsy. We've discussed this.”

“Anything for you, Will,” Hannibal concedes graciously. It had been worth a shot. “Which leads me to an alternative.”

He stands, considers, then carefully paces around Will to stand between him and the bed. Will rather warily pivots along with him, bemused.

Hannibal checks the distance and adjusts his position by a step's width accordingly. The window is a blank square of stormy sky beyond Will's right shoulder, a rippled, whipped-up gradation from snow to soot, the only light in the room. Presently there is another flashbulb bloom of lightning within the clouds, the thunder rolling after it two seconds later. Two miles out. Looming ever closer.

Will opens his mouth to speak, draws breath for the question.

Hannibal's hand catches him full across the cheek and knocks the wind from him, more due to the shock than the slap, though the strike was by no means gentle. Will's head turns leftwards with the blow to lessen it, and he stays facing away for several seconds, processing. Hannibal gives him a moment before clinically batting him on the other cheek, again open-palmed, the sharp smack of skin on skin resounding in the silence. This solicits a bitten-off gasp, the scar still clearly tender enough to garner a reaction, Will's profile suddenly clear as a cutout before the window and limned as though with ivory. This time he immediately turns his head to Hannibal. His breathing is beginning to go ragged, and Hannibal is pleased to note that there is a tic in his jaw but a loosening of his shoulders, a serene sort of rage taking hold of the energy about him.

Hannibal leans forward to peer into what he can make out of Will's face and smiles softly at what he sees there. One more straw should do it.

He pushes even closer until their faces are side by side, his words curling right into Will's ear, shaped by the grin he doesn't bother to suppress. “Go on, Will. Go ahead.”

And Will does.

Hannibal keeps himself relaxed as Will's hands find his throat to send him stumbling, driving him, choking, backwards, bearing him down onto the bed, though he can't keep himself from reflexively reaching for Will to steady himself, hands gliding over Will's arms, coming up to rest on his shoulders as he hits the sagging mattress, his legs hanging off, toes brushing the floor. Will shoves between Hannibal's knees and hunches forward over Hannibal's torso, animalistic as a gargoyle, spine curved and arms only slightly bent, leaning his weight into Hannibal's neck. The sound of his teeth grinding is just audible over the squeal of the bed springs, his figure a tense, trembling silhouette.

His hands are fine-boned, deceptively so. Lovely, graceful hands which Hannibal has taken great pleasure in sketching, all spare, well-articulated angles and fluid lines. All Hannibal can feel now is the brutality in them, the unremittingly cruel pressure compressing tendon and cartilage, the thumbs digging in on either side of his Adam's apple and the blunt fingernails scrabbling past his carotid arteries, seeking to cut into the nape of his neck. He can feel his flesh bulging around Will's grip, their skin already hot at the point of contact, just damp enough to aid the contraction of Will's hands as they slide incrementally tighter. Under other circumstances Hannibal would laugh in delight, but... well. He finds he hasn't quite the air.

His throat already feels crushed, tissue and muscle creaking, his airless chest heaving as he attempts to hitch in a breath and finds his trachea blocked. He gags instead, his tongue lolling. It's shoved forward in his gaping mouth, not enough space, his entire head seemingly shrinking around his organs, around his nasal cavity and his brain and around his eyes, which water and roll in the too-snug fit of their sockets, a roaring starting up in his ears, the engorged veins in his temples pressing out, itchy, against the paper veneer of his skin, and a perverse heat likewise throbbing all the way down in his groin even as a tingling numbness tickles at his extremities.

Will shakes him a little, throttling him as one would a rag doll, lifting the back of Hannibal's skull from the mattress as he bends lower over him until Will's breath purls over his brow, oddly cold. Hannibal realizes that Will is shushing him, an oceanic hiss, waves foaming over rocks, though Hannibal is making no noise to quiet.

His diaphragm spasms, futilely trying to pump his burning lungs full, and he consciously loosens his body to soothe the reflexive tremors trying to fight free, his own hands slipping away from Will's shoulders to fall to the bed, palm-up, calm and open like sunflowers lifting their faceless heads to the sky in worship. It is as though his head and his torso are separating into two distinct entities, his chest heavy and twitchy, the empty space within acutely, exquisitely apparent, a sucking solidity pulling at his rib cage, threatening collapse, whereas his head is increasingly still and increasingly light, supported by the hands encircling his throat to the point of drifting, the static in his ears taking on a wavering, elusive melody; a hidden aria soaring in the tortured beat of his blood just for him, threatening expansion beyond corporeality.

The shaggy spray of Will's hair has begun to float outward above him, melding with the insidious fingers of dusk crawling across the ceiling, though perhaps that is simply the blackness puffing into the edges of Hannibal's vision. When he blinks the blackness transmutes into blinding colors, spots of light like shooting stars skittering into being and then snuffing out again just as quickly. The aria in his ears is forming words, a familiar voice, singing to him, saying: _It's beautiful._

 _All for you,_ he mouths back, or he thinks he does, as, like an inexorably rising tide, oblivion finally washes over him and carries him away.

 

~~~

 

He comes to coughing and gasping shortly thereafter, sweet air sawing into his ravaged throat and inflating his starved lungs. Will's hands are back on him, but they are now gentle, tentative with guilt as they help him sit up and glide in firm, smooth sweeps down his back.

“Feeling better?” Hannibal rasps. Speaking feels akin to swallowing gravel, but he does so anyways. Communication is the key to a long-lasting relationship, after all.

 _“That_ was the alternative to killing someone?” Will snaps. He seems... peeved.

“You need an outlet for your nascent sense of sadism,” Hannibal says, his voice a hoarse wreck which gives out on every other word. He valiantly suppresses another cough with no little difficulty. “One which will engage your empathy. I was and am happy to assist you in this, Will.”

“I was happy to have your assistance,” Will says, standing up and drawing away. The motel room is shrouded in near darkness now, a deep indigo gloom which renders everything indistinct, the sounds loud in the hush. Will reaches the window, slides his fingers along the sill until he bumps the cigarette pack and picks it up with a soft rustle of cardboard. “But I was waiting for you to fight back.”

Hannibal cocks his head to the side, studies the bow of Will's head, the careless way he's holding the cigarettes. “You need not fight for something given freely, in the spirit of love.”

“Love,” Will mutters, as though to himself. He meanders closer again, unfolding the tab holding the pack shut, shaking out a single, stale cigarette to place between his lips and letting the rest of the pack fall unheeded to the floor in favor of reaching a hand into his jeans pocket, every motion vague as a dream, specifics lost as the storm growls black beyond the window glass, occluding the last of the dying daylight. When Will speaks again he's mumbling slightly, keeping the cigarette between his teeth. “How did you know I wouldn't keep going? I wanted to. I almost did.”

“Even if my trust is not implicit, my love is,” Hannibal says, the devotion in his tone apparent even to himself, for even if he wondered whether or not Will would go too far, old hostilities rising up, subsuming affection, he would still have allowed Will to do so. Would give everything to him. Freely.

Will, he knows, is the same. 

Will stills at this declaration before drawing his hand from his pocket. There is the click of a lighter, a spark then a catch, and a tiny tongue of orange flame bursts upwards, painting Will's face in burnished gold and shifting shadows as he brings it up and touches it, hissing, to the tip of the cigarette. Breathes inward until it catches, flicks the lighter shut and plunges everything back into the comfort of the dark. The ember smolders, a single point of baleful red light which intensifies as Will sucks inward, dims as he breathes out all in a rush.

Unseen, Hannibal wrinkles his nose at the stench.

“You should be more careful with yourself.” Will must be remembering the fall, the way Hannibal had simply, docilely, allowed Will to tip them over the cliff's edge, how he had pillowed Will's body from the waves with his own.

“I can think of no better hands to entrust myself than yours.”

“I can think of a few,” Will says snidely, the cigarette ember traveling downward in a vermilion streak as he takes it from between his lips to dangle at his side.

“No hands I would prefer,” Hannibal allows, wry. “Stable or no.”

Another step puts Will back between Hannibal's legs, his chest level with Hannibal's eyes so that he must tip his head back to maintain the sense of eye contact in the blindness swathed between them. The mingling scents of stale cigarette smoke and sweat fill his nostrils, burning in his bruised throat. He inhales more deeply.

“Your funeral,” Will sighs, pulling in another lung's worth of vile smoke, the red coal gliding dangerously close to Hannibal's cheek as he moves to cup his face, deadly hands now so incredibly tender, Hannibal's mouth pliant and open beneath Will's as their lips skim against each other, skin dry and smoke drier as it swirls past Hannibal's teeth, floods his mouth and slips like a silk scarf down his aching throat.

The storm reaches them, the heavens breaking open as though cleaved by an ax, a driving needlepoint rain thrashing against the window with the sound of a thousand hollow screams.

 

 

 

 


End file.
